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startonebyone: This is part of a series of interviews about...

tableandtennis — Thu, 23 May 2013 16:54:55 -0700

This is part of a series of interviews about the power of taking small steps, & the impact our environment & surroundings have on us. The same principles behind the 1X1 brand.

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Questions & Insights with Clem Auyeung

Clem collaborates with early-stage companies to grow their community, product, and positive impact. He is passionate about building authentic connections in helping other people reach their highest potential. He loves startups and is currently helping StartSomeGood empower anyone to crowdfund their social impact projects.

Also, on the side Clem has been helping develop the 1X1 brand. We will share more on that in the future because it’s a great example & manifestation of how our came to life in a great & unique way.

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What is one small thing you and/or your business has done repeatedly & has led to something substantial?

Checking in with myself everyday. I ask myself, “How am I feeling? What energy level am I at? Why is that?”

By becoming an outside observer of my current state, I could take actions that are more in-line with who I am and who I want to become. How could you change your current situation if you aren’t aware of how you feel or why you feel a certain way?

Recently, I attended a life accelerator program called, Bold Academy, where I learned the value of self-care and really listening to how you feel everyday and asking why. By starting with that, you are able to create the environment and take the actions that build you up. It’s these check-ins that lets me become who I really want to be and constantly evaluate how I want to show up in the world.

I think this is important because it keeps everything in perspective and lets me focus on the journey and not solely on the destination.

When you constantly have an eye towards a point in the future, one of two things can happen: (1) You get there and it’s not what you expected. (2) You get there and feel great about your achievement, but after the high wears off, you might think, “Now what?” You discover what you’ve had to sacrifice in order to get there and realize that the destination wasn’t worth it.

A dose of perspective from checking in with yourself could have prevented you from going too far along before changing course. It’s okay to change your path! If you’re doing something to validate yourself or reinforce an image you want to uphold in the world, it might not be the right reasons for doing something. When you’re making a decision, you’re not just choosing one thing over another. You’re choosing to not pursue the millions of other things you could be doing. Not every part of the journey is pleasant, but ask yourself everyday: “Is it worth it?”

So check in with yourself everyday to take note of your energy. Become an outside observer and ask yourself why you are feeling a particular positive/negative emotion. By bringing awareness to it, you can figure out what exactly you’re reacting to and see if it really matters in the context of your life. I’m not some guru by any means, but this is something that works for me. Everything starts with you and how you want to interact with your world and the people around you. People who lose perspective are the ones who go too long without checking in with themselves. And they’re more likely to create a world that might mirror their dissatisfaction, anger, and frustration in their own life. The first step is to seek out and pay attention to your reactions.

What do I do exactly? I keep a small Moleskine with me at all times and write down my thoughts, ideas, feelings, and visions. I do this to capture my thoughts and review them at the end of the week. I ask myself, “Is there anything I can add or take away that could enhance my life and help me be more aligned with myself and my work?” I think paying attention to these details and taking small actions will ultimately help me create the life I want.

I also love taking long evening walks by myself (when the weather is nice) or meditate (I’m new to that) to reflect. I do this to quiet my environment so I could hear myself. I’ve found it hard to listen to myself when I’m surrounded by the constant chatter, noise, and distraction — especially since I work online. Also, it’s important to me to reflect on what I’m grateful for each day. Gratitude often puts my worries, unhappiness, and frustrations in perspective.

Personally, I don’t think there’s anything more substantial than deciding how you want to show up in the world everyday. If you understand yourself, you can control your focus, actions, and reactions on things that are more aligned with who you are and what you value. After all, it’s your interactions with other people that will create positive impact on the world!

Describe the environment you love spending time at. What’s happening there, who’s there (if anyone), & what does it look like?

There is a chain of urban lakes about a half mile from where I live now that I love to run or walk around. I feel like I’m channelling Thoreau, but I’ve really come to appreciate nature in an urban environment. There are trails all around it and it’s so picturesque when the sun is setting! I love it because it seems like my best ideas come to me when I’m immersed in it and I think surrounding myself around nature really helps me find clarity. I admire the complex simplicity of nature’s designs!

Minneapolis is a fitness-crazy city, so there’s always people running, walking, biking, etc. around these lakes. But they’re more like background noise to me. And in the summer, there are always sailboats in the water and people paddle-boarding and windsurfing. There are couple beaches scattered around, which attract diverse characters from all around the city and it makes for an interesting anthropological study.

What is a personal example, or observation that you think illustrates one of the following quotes:

“Unity is strength… when there is teamwork and collaboration, wonderful things can be achieved.” Mattie Stepanek

or

“Build your reputation by helping other people build theirs.” Anthony J. D’Angelo

Both are great quotes! I guess this story could speak to either, depending on what you want to take away from it.

In my past life, I was a die-hard swimmer. I started competing when I was nine years old and swam all the way up to the end of college. And I’ve learned so much about teamwork and collaboration — and along with it, failures and achievements.

One of the most important things I’ve learned is that you can’t force people to come together and be a better team member. Leading by example could inspire people to unite around shared goals, but you need more than that. I found that focusing on yourself to become better and trying to inspire your teammates is only part of the answer.

In order to unite your team and achieve a common goal, you need to build up the people around you. You need to embed that into the team culture and reinforce that as much as possible.

I learned that the hard way in high school when I tried to only lead by example. I was super passionate about swimming and was very much a student of the sport. There were weekends when I pushed the pause and rewind buttons a hundred times to analyze the techniques of world champions and olympians. I swam year-round. I would work on flip turns after practice when everyone else was standing under a hot shower.

But part of the motivation came from the recognition and respect I’d expect from others. I wanted to feel validated by my friends, teammates, coaches, and even friends’ parents. I wanted to be the best, to win the most points, to have my name appear in the newspaper, to break records and win medals. It was all about me. But at the same time, I was trying to show my teammates what they could achieve with the same hard work and dedication, and force them to work harder. In hindsight, that was the wrong approach. I took out the fun and the enjoyment out of practice and competition. I wasn’t really listening to them as much as taking the sport so seriously that I was coming down on them for not working as hard as I was.

Basically, most of the team resisted. They actually went in the opposite direction. Sure I scored some points and brought home some medals, but none of that really mattered. Because I didn’t really pay attention to their successes. I didn’t invest enough time to help them love the sport as much as I did and — if they wanted me to — help them get faster.

Everything changed when I swam in college. I swam on a team that was winning conference titles and were regularly sending teammates to NCAA’s. I practiced alongside some of the fastest in the the nation. And definitely more dedicated and hard working than I could have imagined. But they never came down on me or anything. Instead, they infused fun, inspiration, recognition, and encouragement into the daily practice. Somethings I didn’t do before.

As a wide-eyed freshmen, my teammates were passionate about winning the conference title and made me believe that that was achievable. And they helped me believe that I could perform far better than I imagined and that the sacrifice to get there was going to be worth it. They helped me enjoy the experience and find the fun and the funny in each hard day of practice. But most important of all, my teammates helped me realize that the heart matters more than the effort. It doesn’t really matter how fast and talented you are, everyone who puts their entire heart into the training deserves the respect and the celebration of getting a little faster and surpassing their own personal goals.

Though they had little tolerance for negative attitudes, defeatist self-talk, and slacking, my teammates instilled confidence in the vision and in yourself to achieve goals you thought you couldn’t. They did this by investing time to help each other improve their technique, race strategies, and pushing each other beyond the perceived limits. They picked each other up after bad races and celebrated small and big wins. Mind you, we had about 80 people on the team. We were one of the largest sports teams on campus!

You still need leaders, though, to nurture and foster relationships in and out of the pool to make this work. It doesn’t matter if you were one of the captains or not; Everyone had the responsibility to keep front and center our focus (fun), our purpose (swim with your heart and swim to inspire), and how to get there (come prepared for practice mentally and physically and leave everything in the pool). And of course, reinforce positivity with mantras like, “Don’t be a rain cloud. Be a flamer.”

Because of my team, I swam faster than I thought I could and fulfilled my ultimate goal by swimming at NCAA’s. But what I am most proud of is being part of an incredible team that rallied together to achieve something that we could all share — the experience of winning. Every person contributed to the process in their own unique way.

Above all, I still use the lessons I’ve learned in the pool everyday, and apply what it really means to build a team and be a part of it. It starts with building personal relationships and making others better. But the caveat is that you also have to find your tribe and other like-minded people, too. Sometimes, it’s just the wrong group of people.

If you want to unite your team and achieve something great together, you have to be in sync with your teammates and their visions of success, and build them up from there.

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If you want to learn more about 1X1, what we are up to, what we care about, and why we are doing what we are doing, you can sign up for updates by clicking Right Here!

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“No single step changes everything, but every single step changes something.”

Trade-ups, not trade-offs

tableandtennis — Fri, 10 May 2013 12:42:12 -0700

startonebyone:

Several years ago I designed a product called Table & Tennis, and I’ve been selling it on a really small scale for a few years. I’ve never really done much marketing for the idea, or tried to scale it up (yet) because there are a lot of parts to the process, mainly international shipping and logistics that just didn’t feel resolved for me.

Even without the marketing, I have gotten a decent amount of interest. Some of my favorite blogs have covered it, including Notcot, swissmiss, Gizmodo, Core 77, Wired, and many others, and I recently did a little interview with Inc. Magazine about it. I never created an e-commerce store for it, just simply had my email on a tumblr blog, and over the past few years about 1000 people have contacted me to inquire about the table. In the world of the internet those aren’t big numbers, but to me it seems pretty significant, especially since it’s a pretty expensive item. Of course the number of people that actually ended up getting the table is much smaller, maybe about two percent. This really isn’t the point I’m trying to get to, but it must have some significance since it popped in my head, but moving on…

The reason I’m writing this revolves around a couple of hurdles I’ve encountered with this product. A nice product is one thing, but everyones’ experience with the product, and their experience obtaining the product is the most important part to me. Many people think the table is beautiful, or cool, and that is one of the goals, but the bigger piece to me is the philosophy behind it. It never felt right to me how divided and hierarchical business and offices often felt. I think it’s a shame and unhealthy if you can’t have some genuine fun with the people you work with. I also know how important play and physical movement is for health, creativity, and culture, and yet, it was often ignored or pushed to the closet until the one time a year it was okay to play. Again, I’ve gone off the rails because this also isn’t the main reason I’m writing this.

Okay, back on track, I hope… The most recent Table & Tennis order has turned into a poor experience, at least in my opinion. After the table was finished being built, the shipment got delayed a bit because of some of the factors associated with international shipping, and I’m sure partly due to my inexperience and not having the knowledge to anticipate certain things that may come up. Every order has a different set of laws, forms, costs, etc. because there are different rules for each country. When the table was finally delivered to the customer’s office, they started to assemble the table, but didn’t finish because they said the table was defective, when in fact they didn’t bring a wrench, so they couldn’t put it together properly. Important note: I’m not blaming here, something I always loved about design, but only a few years ago realized applies to every aspect of life, is that this is on me to decide what to do. For example, I could create a friendly instruction kit specifically for the delivery crew. Address them by name, give them my email, supply the wrench, etc.

So in the case of this delivery they left the table unassembled in the company president’s office. They left packing supplies and a mess from the office all the way through the company to the elevator. Of course there are 100 other things that happened after this, but I won’t bore you with all that. The result so far is a bad experience, which is what matters most to me. This bothers me to no end, and effects me all day, and for several days until everything is taken care of.

I’m finally getting to my point :) The people that ordered the table appreciate my concern and efforts to make the situation better, they even told me not to worry about it, that it’s not my fault at all. I told them I really appreciate that, but I absolutely feel accountable and responsible. Maybe I didn’t technically screw up the assembly, or leave a mess in their office, but I created and sold them the product, so ultimately it should be my responsibility.

When people around me see how affected I get when something like this happens, they often say things like, ‘You did what you can, so let it go.’ Or ‘I’m sure you have already gone above and beyond for them, don’t let it bother you.’ Or my least favorite of all, ‘You just need thicker skin with this stuff.’ Isn’t that like telling someone to ‘Get greener eyes.’ Or ‘Just jump higher if you want to dunk.’ There are trade-ups and trade-offs to everything. Sure, I hate feeling down, or embarrassed, or frustrated, or letting my mood effect my time with my wife, but if I didn’t react like this I probably wouldn’t be the type of designer I am, because I believe design = empathy. I wouldn’t be able to come up with ideas that connect with people because I wouldn’t care about how they feel. I wouldn’t have sent the current customer a chocolate and fruit basket today, I wouldn’t be looking at flights to Canada right now to see if it’s feasible for me to go meet the table assembly crew this weekend, and on and on.

Now, I definitely agree there has to be a healthy balance. I need to do everything I can to improve the situation and decide how I want to deal with it in the future, but I can’t allow this to become an issue that is bigger than life itself.

It’s pretty interesting because I always felt like the best designers were pretty sensitive people, and that was why they were great designers. Because they observe and pay attention to how people feel, and genuinely care and are affected by what they see. The irony was that they (and myself included) were always being told by our bosses to essentially ‘get thicker skin.’ The reality is people can have thick skin in some areas of their lives and thin skin in other areas, and it’s probably important not to change that. I know I personally don’t want thick-skinned designers working on health related products, or cars for me!

Anyway, I wanted to share this because it always helps me to write my thoughts down, but also I’m sure there are lots of people that can relate to this, with different details of course, but similar thoughts and emotions.

There are a bunch of other topics and conversations that are inside this post, but not expanded upon, but if any of this is interesting to you, here are a couple of books you might enjoy checking out:

Quiet by Susan Cain

Choose the Life You Want by Tal Ben-Shahar

startonebyone: Questions & Insights with Drew Coburn, head...

tableandtennis — Tue, 07 May 2013 11:28:27 -0700

startonebyone:

Questions & Insights with Drew Coburn, head of strategy at Cubism branding & marketing.

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This is part of a series of interviews about the power of taking small steps, and the impact our environment & surroundings have on us. The same principles that led to the idea for the 1X1 brand.

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I was lucky to meet and work with Drew at my first job at Landor Associates. I was always drawn to Drew’s deep thinking and skills on the basketball court, but most of all, his incredible sincerity in asking questions, listening, wanting to learn, and genuine interest in people and how they felt over anything else.

We both moved on to different jobs for several years and re-connected a few years ago. It was amazing, it was as if we both had become ‘more us’ and our conversations were even more intriguing. I also look up to Drew for following a passion for counseling and coaching in addition to his other endeavors.

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What’s one small thing you and/or your business has done repeatedly & has led to something substantial?

‘How can we help you’ - its almost ritual in our conversations with others. We try not to ask it as a manipulation - to get something, to get somewhere, to gain access to someone as a kind of trade in kind……we simply try to remain generous in listening to and offering ideas to others. It puts me in a freer, looser, more creative space and state of mind - all things just seem to flow better – our generation of ideas for others and ourselves is almost always more plentiful when we focus on them rather than us.

Describe the environment you love spending time at. What’s happening there, who’s there (if anyone), & what does it look like?

I love a more free form environment with less structure but full of people with an intention to help each other…to feed off each other. I guess there would be fewer doors closed and enclosed spaces…more open air, unstructured space……..a few of the areas would have circular tables for congregating and working through challenges of different sorts together. It would have lots of big paper tablets with fat markers – yes including a few that smell really good but eventually give you a headache. It would have fewer computers……they tend to separate people in workspaces and on teams - at least that’s how I see them……There would be a coffee shop nearby, to go to with some of my colleagues, either to sit down and carry on or just to take a break and appreciate one another in a non-work way.

I like having new people come into the mix; yes it would be mandatory for folks to invite 1-2 new people to the space each week, so we could find out about them and then throw them – no – invite them into our flow……great question……

What’s an example that illustrates the following quote (ideally from a personal experience, or one you have observed/learned about that has had an impact on you):

“Unity is strength… when there is teamwork and collaboration, wonderful things can be achieved.” Mattie Stepanek

I’ve watched my kids in a global creative problem solving competition for the past decade or so. One thing I’ve gathered for myself in watching over the years is that Unity has both superficial and profound natures. To me, the unity we most often experience as human beings is the kind of rush to agreement, maintaining good feeling, don’t rock the boat, don’t really put anything on the line kind of unity…..it gets pretty boring, pretty quickly, people not only don’t show up mentally and emotionally, they start to go missing physically….the group breaks down or sort of dribbles away. Superficial unity has a kind of ‘managed’ feel.

The other kind of unity happens when people have the courage, curiousity, I’m not sure what else – to put something on the line….sharing intimately about themselves, exchanging their real ideas and feelings with one another – daring to have open disagreement and even conflict with one another rather than to wallpaper over argument or preempt before it raises its head – to suppress it in the interest of not rocking the boat.

Every year, My kids’ problem solving teams go through this long gestation period that starts out as superficial unity — and then the real stuff starts to happen – amazing kind of ‘brothers and sisters in arms’ kind of stuff……they can fight like cats and dogs one day and defend each other to the death on the next. It is an amazing and predictable process to watch.

Interestingly , I see far fewer examples of profound unity among adults than children……it’s as if we’ve become so practiced at the superficial that its….well like a trench we dig daily and ever deeper…making it a bigger an bigger challenge for us to actually see that were in a trench (hey this is normal life…as good as it gets) , we see were in a trench but across time we get so deep into the trench that its hard to scale the height of its walls – kind of like when mike mulligan and mary ann dug themselves into the cellar with no way out……or were in the trench and we sense that we’re alone down there, with no one to reach out to….no one to ask for help……….

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If you want to learn more about 1X1, what we are up to, what we care about, and why we are doing what we are doing, you can sign up for updates by clicking Right Here!

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“No single step changes everything, but every single step changes something.”

An idea coming to life

tableandtennis — Mon, 06 May 2013 20:20:01 -0700

I’m amazed and excited how quickly and seamlessly we have gone from these sketches:

To this reclaimed wood:

To an almost finished piece of furniture!

CustomMade has been an awesome platform.
Jamison Sellers Design has been a great maker.
And SketchUp is an amazing, and intuitive program you can use for free.

"Of course you never get a second chance to make a first impression, but you always have a second..."

tableandtennis — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 11:14:31 -0700

“Of course you never get a second chance to make a first impression, but you always have a second chance to change the first impression.”

"Great companies are vibrant, they can hardly contain themselves. It’s because they’re made by..."

tableandtennis — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 10:02:53 -0700

“Great companies are vibrant, they can hardly contain themselves. It’s because they’re made by believers who want to find other believers and convert the rest.”

- An email from Scott Kraft. (via zachklein) - YES. (via fyietc)

startonebyone: loveyourkicks: With HICKIES we make putting on...

tableandtennis — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 10:02:24 -0700

startonebyone:

loveyourkicks:

With HICKIES we make putting on shoes just a one step process. Never tie your shoes again!

We will write a bit in the near future about why we like HICKIES so much and why we think it aligns well with some of the 1X1 principles.

startonebyone: Worn out jeans w/ holes + non-fitting...

tableandtennis — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 10:00:26 -0700

startonebyone:

Worn out jeans w/ holes + non-fitting @brooklynindustries shirt = New, one-off jeans. #reup #pluspieces #bemoreyou #wornwith @hickies #beforeandshortlyafter

startonebyone: Great post from @chrisbrogan...

tableandtennis — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 09:59:46 -0700

startonebyone:

Great post from @chrisbrogan http://www.humanbusinessworks.com/who-do-you-know

creativemornings: “There’s pretty much nothing I’ve done right...

tableandtennis — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 09:50:28 -0700

creativemornings:

“There’s pretty much nothing I’ve done right before doing it wrong first.”

Sharon Montrose, Photographer
speaking at CreativeMornings/LosAngeles(*watch the talk)

"Every dollar spent at a locally owned business generates two-to-four times the economic development..."

tableandtennis — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 09:48:28 -0700

“Every dollar spent at a locally owned business generates two-to-four times the economic development impacts as a dollar spent on an equivalent non-local business.”

- Forbes piece on the amazing power of spending locally. (via poptech)

It’s not only healthy for you to eat fresh and local food, it’s healthy for your neighborhood’s economy.

And speaking of a healthy community, I’m speaking tonight at an event in Williamsburg that’s raising awareness about asbestos removal at the Domino Sugar Factory. It looks like there are some very shady removal tactics happening at the site putting the community at risk of breathing more asbestos fibers than we should be. The local issues in your immediate neighborhood where you work and play are by far the most important issues to get involved in.

(via jayparkinsonmd)

"My dream is to have people working on useless projects. These have the germ of new concepts."

tableandtennis — Sun, 28 Apr 2013 06:47:17 -0700

“My dream is to have people working on useless projects. These have the germ of new concepts.”

- Charles Eames (via jacob)

The Two Most Important Words - Harvard Business Review

tableandtennis — Sun, 28 Apr 2013 06:46:13 -0700

The Two Most Important Words - Harvard Business Review:

fyietc:

Gratitude is a practice. Make it a priority.

- Thank you.

startonebyone: Such a great talk from John Jay @imprintlab in...

tableandtennis — Sun, 28 Apr 2013 06:42:25 -0700

startonebyone:

Such a great talk from John Jay @imprintlab in Long Beach yesterday. One of my favorite quotes was when he was talking about his top floor office with views and he said: “I was trying to slide down the corporate ladder as fast as possible.”

startonebyone: Excited, honored, and humbled to be a visiting...

tableandtennis — Sun, 28 Apr 2013 06:41:58 -0700

startonebyone:

Excited, honored, and humbled to be a visiting instructor for my friend’s new school. @vanishingfootprints

creativemornings: “It’s really amazing the difference you can...

tableandtennis — Sun, 28 Apr 2013 06:41:36 -0700

creativemornings:

“It’s really amazing the difference you can make in someone’s day just by talking to them.”

Stewart Scott-Curran, Art Director, Graphic Designer, and Illustrator
speaking at CreativeMornings/Atlanta(*watch the talk)

"No great creative idea will ever test well."

tableandtennis — Sun, 28 Apr 2013 06:40:13 -0700

“No great creative idea will ever test well.”

- John Jay at Imprint Culture Lab (via startonebyone)

startonebyone: It doesn’t have to make cents for it to make...

tableandtennis — Sun, 28 Apr 2013 06:39:10 -0700

startonebyone:

It doesn’t have to make cents for it to make sense.

So much truth to this.

tableandtennis — Wed, 24 Apr 2013 11:10:39 -0700

So much truth to this.

startonebyone: Going through an old presentation, finding some...

tableandtennis — Wed, 24 Apr 2013 11:09:05 -0700

startonebyone:

Going through an old presentation, finding some great quotes/inspiration.

“No matter where you are, you can always increase your momentum. The best way to do this is by starting small.”

Looking for source